Space jump

PhotonWrangler

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Did anyone else watch it? I thought it was pretty amazing, although a couple of things are bugging me -

Why was the communications so crappy when he was falling back to earth? He was sasking for stuff and nobody could understand what he was saying for quite awhile, not even mission control. Haven't we gotten past crappy radio communications?

Were there any provisions to mitigate the visor fogging as he was falling back to earth? That was one thing that seemed to be out of control.

Overall it was an amazing accomplishment and I hope they gain a lot useful data from this.
 
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Stu_Travelbee

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I watched it start to finish!!! I love what a private group can accomplish for the money compared to large government agencies. There were great video camera shots documenting the event throughout the whole mission, too.
 

Yoda4561

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The visor has a heating device that's supposed to prevent fogging, and the atmosphere inside the suit is controlled so it shouldn't be fogging internally. I'm guessing they'll review the jump data and take some notes for a future revision. The radio issues are a little surprising to me too, it sounded worse than the nasa moon landing radio transmissions. Guessing part of the issue is just that it's hard to get good microphone audio inside a solid helmet like that, not to mention sound coming from outside the helmet as the wind is rushing past.
 

SATCOM

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Watched it and was truly amazed that a human could reach the speed of sound without driving a jet. It was on this date that the sound barrier was first broke back in 1947.
 

PhotonWrangler

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I'm sure that his supersonic speed had something to do with the bad audio. Maybe I'm just naive but I think this should be surmountable. Hopefully the data collected from the jump will help to improve this for future space activities.
 

blasterman

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Radio communications are tougher than you think when you're dealing with moving the data linking around and don't have massive cell towers nearby. You're also breathing inside a pressured, wind blasted helmet falling at 700mph and at one point spinning out of control at fairly high G's, so what's next, gripes about not making twitter comments on the way down? You guys have been watching too many James Cameron movies :duh2: I've made half a dozen freefall jumps and can't imagine talking clearly inside a space helmet while trying concentrate on maintaining proper body arch.

The visor had internal nichrome wiring to supposedly keep it from fogging up when the external temp got really cold. They started to have a problem with this during the ascent, and cranked it up to full, and still had a problem. This was, as I believe, the reason he pulled his canopy early. Judging by his audible comments on the way down visibility was a big problem due to fogging, and being a base jumper there's no way he'd just blindly trust an auto reserve while staring through foggy plastic.

Great work over-all by the tech and engineering team on this. Curous to see his chest mounted video footage, especially when he started tumbling.
 

ShineOnYouCrazyDiamond

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I can't believe I missed this live. Darn. :(

I had signed up at redbullstratos.com to get an email when the launch was rescheduled from earlier last week but never got a notice.

Gonna have to go back and watch all this later tonight.
 

mgscheue

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Did anyone else watch it? I thought it was pretty amazing, although a couple of things are bugging me -

Why was the communications so crappy when he was falling back to earth? He was sasking for stuff and nobody could understand what he was saying for quite awhile, not even mission control. Haven't we gotten past crappy radio communications?

Were there any provisions to mitigate the visor fogging as he was falling back to earth? That was one thing that seemed to be out of control.

Overall it was an amazing accomplishment and I hope they gain a lot useful data from this.

I enjoyed watching it, live. A lot of great things to talk about in my physics class.

I actually thought some of the communications was going quite badly before he jumped. There were times when he seemed quite unresponsive and perhaps even confused during the checklist procedures. I don't know if that was the case, of course. Perhaps it was problems with the radio but the video feeds appeared to be working perfectly well.
 

StarHalo

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This is the pic that gets me; just looking at it doesn't even make sense. It's like stepping out into Google Earth. At some point you have to worry more about floating away than falling down..

imqqFTSpeIQ6f.jpg
 

jtr1962

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The wide angle camera greatly exaggerates the curvature of the Earth's surface but this curvature is definitely visible at that altitude. Amazing you can go that high in a balloon. Air pressure at that altitude is only about 0.07 psi (compared to 14.7 psi at sea level). For all intents and purposes that's a vacuum.
 

moldyoldy

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it was an amazing feat - and with impressive nerves, and that he was able to re-control his spinning after reaching the denser layers of the atmosphere.

However one technical question: Did the Austrian Skydiver Felix Baumgartner exceed the "speed of sound" at his altitude or did he exceed the speed of sound at sea-level? The speed of sound varies with altitude because of the "air" temperature changes - decreases with altitude, then increases, then decreases. Evidently the data is still being analyzed. Either could be correct.
 

Steve K

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However one technical question: Did the Austrian Skydiver Felix Baumgartner exceed the "speed of sound" at his altitude or did he exceed the speed of sound at sea-level? The speed of sound varies with altitude because of the "air" temperature changes - decreases with altitude, then increases, then decreases. Evidently the data is still being analyzed. Either could be correct.

I was sort of waiting for some official numbers on that too.... all I can say is that the speed of sound is around 700mph at sea level, and decreases as you go higher. There was a velocity reading on the screen as he was free falling, and it got over 700mph by a significant amount, so I figured it was safely over Mach 1.

All in all, pretty cool stuff! The period when Felix was relatively unresponsive just before the jump had me a bit worried. Was he busy with tasks? Maybe wondering if he forgot to unplug something or properly fasten something else?? or just on the edge of an anxiety attack?
I did a few jumps with a static line and one free fall, so I can certainly identify with the anxiety of stepping outside of your vehicle and preparing to step into the nothingness... it's just not a natural thing to do! :)
 

ElectronGuru

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At some point you have to worry more about floating away than falling down..

When I was a kid watching TV, it seemed like the 'range' of gravity was pretty short. You rocket out to a certain distance, and when you leave gravity behind, you're called 'weightless'. Made perfect sense. Sometime later I got the 2nd part, with the gravity at-that-point, being canceled by centrifugal force from the carefully calculated orbital speed.


it's just not a natural thing to do! :)

Out of a perfectly good aircraft, no less ;)
 
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jtr1962

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When I was a kid watching TV, it seemed like the 'range' of gravity was pretty short. You rocket out to a certain distance, and when you leave gravity behind, you're called 'weightless'. Made perfect sense. Sometime later I got the 2nd part, with the gravity at-that-point, being canceled by centrifugal force from the carefully calculated orbital speed.
Um, yeah. If you're not in motion you'll fall to Earth even if you're 100,000 miles high. Of course, the Earth's rotation imparts a spin except at the poles, so hypothetically if you could climb straight up remaining stationary over a point on the Earth's surface, eventually you'll reach a height where you'll be at orbital speed. That's actually the principal of geosynchronous orbit.
 

Sub_Umbra

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I also watched from start to finish. I was pretty ho-hum to start with but the event really sucked me in as it went on.

As a side note it did my heart good to read that Chuck Yeager was also in the air yesterday (second seat in an F-15D) and broke Mach 1 again exactly 65 years to the minute from when he first did it piloting the Bell-X1 in 1947.

He's 89 years old. Go Chuck.
 

PhotonWrangler

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As a side note it did my heart good to read that Chuck Yeager was also in the air yesterday (second seat in an F-15D) and broke Mach 1 again exactly 65 years to the minute from when he first did it piloting the Bell-X1 in 1947.

He's 89 years old. Go Chuck.

Yeah, I enjoyed seeing that also. He's still got it. :twothumbs
 

StarHalo

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Less fisheye, more Google Earth, just as scary:

i641xlJfM3BNg.jpg


Also, it's not widely known, but Chuck Yeager originally broke the sound barrier with two broken ribs - it almost didn't happen because he was in excruciating pain from the contortions needed to get into the X1 and the g-forces involved once he was in it. I wonder if it was easier to do it as an 89 year old, or as a young fit guy with broken bones..
 

jtr1962

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I'm getting queasy just looking at that picture. :eek: I couldn't imagine jumping. That said, I think I would be thrilled to take a balloon ride in a pressurized capsule to that altitude, then just hang around there for a day, or as long as my oxygen supply permitted. Maybe I would even don a spacesuit and go outside for a brief time. No way though would I jump. I prefer to go back down the same way I came up.

If it's ever built, I think riding a space elevator would be even more awesome than a high-altitude balloon flight.
 
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